


Aquamania

by dehautdesert



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bondage, Community: got_exchange, Drowned God Religion, Drowning, Euron is his own warning, Incest, M/M, Mermaids, Mindfuck, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sibling Incest, Symbolism, Visions, general weirdness, probably AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2489411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aeron is in the Drowned God's Watery Halls once more, receiving guidance on what to do about Euron. </p>
<p>Or is he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aquamania

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt, 'What happened to Aeron Greyjoy after the Kingsmoot?'
> 
> Well, friends, NaNoWriMo is approaching and I'll have no time to work on fanfic; so I thought I'd post this up for everyone to enjoy (or, more likely, stare at in horror). In other news--apparently no 'Mermaids' tag on A03. Wtf is up with that? ;)

He fell.

 

The sky was dark; green and blue swirling together and so dark it was almost black. Beside him, his hair floated out in gentle waves and every time he turned his head he heard the air swish around him and saw the tiny fragments of silt rise up above his head.

Only there was no air.

Only water.

Only the sea.

Dark shapes that might have been fish or may have been something else entirely swam ahead of him, passing in and out of the darkness like shadows hiding from flames. The light, such as it was, was coming from Aeron's own body. He didn't know what that meant, but for the time being it comforted him.

Water passed in an out of his lungs as easily as air. He could hear the gentle ripples every slight movement caused, and the echoes of other things out in the sea, but for the most part it was quiet. The harshness of voices in the air was gone.

'EURON! EURON! EURON!'

He wouldn't be allowed down here. The Drowned God would never let him enter this place, no matter how much power he had. Even if he found those wretched dragons whose empty shadows had displaced Victarion from his rightful seat, they could not enter this sanctuary. There was no place for fire here.

Aeron took a small step forward hesitantly, looking down to what his feet were stepping onto as he did. Beneath him, he was walking on the soft surface of the water, and beneath that was the image of the night sky. Above him the endless depths of the ocean stretched out to infinity. Aeron felt no perturbance at what some might had called the reverse of the natural order—indeed, it seemed to him that this was finally the way things were supposed to be.

He remembered feeling that way once before. That this was the way things were supposed to be.

So why was Euron now king, when it should have been Victarion?

Had he come to this place to find out? How had he come to this place? He remembered falling, to an extent, but not where he'd been falling from or why.

_It doesn't matter_ , he told himself. _What matters is that you are here now. You must find out what the Drowned God wants. Why he allowed Euron to take the Seastone Chair. What you have to do to destroy him._

He took another step forward. The stars below him seemed to shine brighter where he stepped, and he could see further now; his eyes adjusting to the lack of light—the right amount of light, rather. He had come here for a reason, and he had to have the courage to see it through; worthless as he was he had been chosen. He could not refuse the call.

And yet...

'EURON, EURON, EURON!'

Those shouts still echoed from the inside of his skull, even when the outside was nothing but the echoing of waves. In his higher mind he knew it was cowardly; to fear a mere man such as Euron when the power of the one true god was on his side, but his heart quaked all the same and reminded him how little value he had. Perhaps if he had not called the kingsmoot...

_No, it was His will you called the kingsmoot,_ he reminded himself. _He knows what he is doing. Do not forget yourself because of Euron. You have work to do._

What work, though? _What work?_

He remembered trying to reason out what he was meant to do after the Kingsmoot, and he knew he had done... something, that had brought him to this place, this place where the world was as it should be instead of as he knew it, but for some reason every time he tried to remember the line of thought that had lead to this, all he could hear was EURON! EURON! EURON! and he refused to listen to that any longer.

Instead, he took another step forward, then another. Beneath him the line between sea and sky felt incorporeal, yet he was not standing on nothing. He told himself he'd have to get used to this strange feeling and continued to walk, listening carefully for any trace of sound within the water that he could follow.

It was odd, being that he was near the Halls after all this time, but he knew he was not truly dead—or at least not yet. This felt much like the time he had first been drowned, and he was dead, he knew, but as of yet poised to rise again.

_Make me stronger_ , he thought. _Make me even stronger than you made me before._

_Make me strong enough to face him. Make me strong enough to fight him._

_Show me the way._

And as if in answer, there was a pull in the water; a current—it tugged his hair out in front of him and then grew stronger, and stronger, until it began to move him bodily. Aeron did not fight it, but spread his arms out to catch more of it and flew through the water until he could see another source of light in the distance.

Bubbles shot past him when he came to a halt. He suddenly knew he wasn't alone, and hadn't been since his arrival.

He turned around.

At first he thought that there was nothing but shadows swimming before his eyes. Then the shadows twisted, and he could see a shape form from within them, a solid shape, with a human head, arms and chest, and the long tail of a fish.

A mermaid.

A servant of the Drowned God.

She was green as the water around her; her hair, her skin, her scales. The eye that wasn't covered by her shell-strung locks was even deeper, like a huge green pearl without a pupil. That pearl was looking at him, and the deep green lips beneath it grinned.

"Aeron Damphair," she said. Her voice sounded like sea water boiling. "We knew you would come here again."

"I have come for revelation," he told her.

"What is it you expect to be revealed?"

Aeron clenched his fists. "I want to know why," he said. He could barely hear his own words. "Why was Euron Crow's Eye allowed to take the Seastone Chair, and how can we destroy him?"

The mermaid flicked her tail and pushed herself closer to Aeron; still smiling, and smiling strangely. At first he had been comforted to see her, knowing her connection to the Drowned God, but now that smile was sending a flicker of doubt through his chest. It was not serene as he would have once expected. It was something else.

"What you _need_ to know will be revealed here, Damphair," she told him.

Need, not want. That meant somehow he had been asking the wrong questions. It relieved him at the same time as it disturbed him. Was there a reason the Drowned God wanted Euron to be king of the islands? Was there something only Euron could do to be done before he could be put on his way and replaced by someone more worthy?

Was Euron destined for some kind of redemption, as Aeron had been?

He felt the seed of conflict enter his heart even at the idle thought. If that was what the Drowned God meant to happen that was what had to happen, and yet to accept Euron back for any reason, any redemption, seemed so unpalatable to Aeron that for a moment he was actually afraid again.

The mermaid swam closer again, so that strands of their hair were gently brushing up against each other with the current.

"I will not let you die here, Aeron," she told him.

Somehow, that made him even more afraid.

Without another word, and faster than he had the time to realise what she was doing, the mermaid swooped in and kissed him on the mouth.

The water was getting colder.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

_"How long has he been under? Not as long as he was the first time, I'd wager—set him down. Now, little brother, we'll see if I really am as godly as you are. Hold his head back."_

*~*~*~*~*

 

Aeron opened his eyes once more and saw a strange light coming from beneath him. Up ahead, in the water, was a great expanse of rock that went on for miles, and below it—it's reflection, so to speak—was an inverted island, with golden sand and trees that grew far down into the sky. Aeron looked around to the mermaid for some instruction, but she was no longer there.

Beneath his feet he saw the white underbelly of a gull as it flew up to land on the water. Its yellow feet sprouted from the floor on which Aeron stood and waved back and forth like a little weed. Then it poked its head up into the waves.

One yellow eye caught Aeron's, and held it in its gaze for several long moments. Aeron nodded in greeting to it; all the sea birds came from the sea as the ironborn had, doomed to a fate even worse than theirs, to wander the skies and the domain of the Storm God, and see no more than a glimpse of the watery halls—never submerging themselves within their depths because of the cursed weightlessness of their bodies.

The gull blinked after a while and turned its head twice before pulling it out of the water. Though with the barrier of the sea between them the Gull was more difficult to see, Aeron watched it fly to the golden island before he lost track of it.

_To the island?_ he wondered. Was that where he would find his answers?

He would not have thought so. It was not part of the domain of the Drowned God.

But it was a place to start.

At first he wondered how he was meant to get from the sea to the island with the world as the reverse from what he was accustomed to. He walked first to the edge of the land and put his hand against the rocky overside, feeling its cold, sharp edges against the skin of his palm. He noticed that even as he pushed his hand harder against the rock the sharpness never caused him pain, only a strange tingling sensation.

Crouching down against the rock he trailed his hand down the rough surface to the bottom, where the stone became sand. Then he pushed against the barrier that he was standing on to test how strong it was. To his surprise, his fingers slipped into the air as easily as they would have into a body of water, and he felt a sudden panic about the surface he was standing on, for if so little pressure was needed to permeate it, how was it holding up his weight?

No matter, he told himself. It was the will of the Drowned God.

Carefully, he turned his wrists around as if he was holding them out for iron restraints—and if he was returning to the world above the water, that was in essence what he was doing—and clutched at the sand on the underside of the rock.

It was a test of his courage to leave the Drowned God's realm and return to the world of the storm, but he had overcome far worse fears than this when he pushed against the tiny grains and submerged his head and upper body in the air.

As soon as he had done so, the strangest feeling afflicted him. He had expected to feel far heavier out of the water, but found that not to be so. Instead the world turned, so that the sea was beneath the sky again and he was right-side up. To catch his bearings from this strange turn he scrambled to shore, breathing heavily.

The island was an oddly silent place. The tide beating against the shore made not a sound. The breeze that seemed to be blowing the leaves of the tall trees against each other did not howl, and moreover Aeron could not feel it. When movement caught the corner of his eye he glanced in its direction and saw a creature running along the beach, and its footsteps were as silent as the rest.

But its whining wasn't. It was a wretched thing; a kind of dog, perhaps, except scaled and finned like a fish. It ran towards Aeron—growling and whimpering alternately, its skin scarred and mutilated on one side, declawed and almost toothless.

Aeron watched it and thought it somehow familiar. And he waited.

"Reek! Reek!"

A young girl's voice rang out through the unnatural silence; a voice Aeron knew very well. He remembered her voice ringing in his ears the first time he was drowned off Fair Isle, with 'good luck, Nuncle,' in a tone that suggested even she—a young girl—thought he'd need it. Even she had known his weakness then. It was a pity she still could not see her own.

"Asha?" he whispered.

Asha ran onto the beach from behind a copse about fifty metres further along from where Aeron was. She was eleven years old again, tall for her age, her long black hair pulled back into a messy plait. She'd cut it after her brothers died, and her mother had no longer had the will to care for it. She'd never liked her hair long anyway.

"There you are, Reek!" she called out, running over. The wind that Aeron could not feel made the black dress she wore ripple around her legs. "Come here!"

The dog whined, growled at Aeron, then whined again and sat down with its tail between its legs. Aeron got to his feet.

"What are you doing here, Asha?" he asked her.

He did not think the Drowned God meant to show him that he should have supported a woman to sit the throne, that idea was absurd, even if she was Balon's daughter. But perhaps Asha had a role to play that he was not aware of, and at any rate, she was no friend to Euron.

This Asha did not respond to him immediately, not even to look his way. She waited until the dog-like creature finally stopped dithering about in the sand and trotted up to her.

"There's a good boy," she said, stroking its scarred skin. At length she spoke again; this time to Aeron, though she still did not cast her gaze his way. "Have you come for my queensmoot, Nuncle?"

Aeron bristled. "Don't think I'll accept such foolishness in this place, Asha," he told her. "You are naught but a girl. What is taking place here?"

"Something important," she answered. "You may observe, if you wish."

"Show me."

The girl sighed and patted the dog on its head. "Come along, Reek," she said. "Let's see what the others are up to."

She stood up and brushed sand onto her dress while the dog yipped and panted, its tail wagging. Suddenly it growled and whined again, but a moment later it was wagging its tail. There was clearly madness in it. Aeron followed it and Asha back the way she'd come, and though a dozen questions were on his lips, the one that passed them was this—

"Why did you call him Reek?"

"I didn't," said Asha simply. "That was all on him."

It seemed like that was an answer, and Aeron found it made some kind of sense to him, even if he didn't know why. It satisfied him, he supposed. He didn't even know why he'd asked in the first place.

Asha ran back along the beach at a pace Aeron found easy to keep up with. There was a high-pitched whine in the air, only just loud enough to hear, and it drew even more attention to the lack of sound on the island. High above him, the seagulls were flying, as silently as everything else. The sky they flew in was black and starry as before, but everything around him was as clear as day—as if a light he could not see was shining on it.

The girl lead him away from the shore, and comfort, to a clearing in the midst of a forest where it had snowed heavily; blanketing that one small area in white where everything else was green or gold.

In the centre of this grove was a table surrounded by nine high-backed chairs. Two chairs were empty, the others...

Aeron had to stop and steel himself for a moment before stepping further into the snow, though Asha ran in without a care in the world. The dog stayed back with Aeron, and then stayed even after Aeron found it within himself to move forward again.

The seven... beings sitting at the table were easy enough for Aeron to identify. All were men—and two women—from the shoulders down, dressed in the finest the Green Lands had to offer; fur and plate armour, silk and golden jewels. The gold price. Each one wore a crown atop their brow, or in one case amongst the branches on their heads, or in another...

Another's head was no head at all, but a ball of light that looked like the sun, and a spear pierced the centre of this globe, between the twining snakes that made its crown. Beside him was the woman with no head but a rose bush, and a crown of golden roses in her leaves. Her roses grew far past her shoulders, and twined, and curled their thorns around the arm of the woman beside her, whose head was that of a male lion with a mane of real gold and mismatched eyes that regarded Aeron curiously.

Beside her was a man with the head of a giant weasel, a trout caught between his jaws, and beside him, ragged and torn with dented, broken armour, was a wolf. Half the skin on the wolf's head had been flayed, the other half was covered in patches of differently coloured fur; black, brown, grey and snowy white. Blood dripped from the wolf's maw; its own or that of prey Aeron could not tell.

On the wolf's other side was a man whose head was that of a black stag. The stag's antlers shimmered and danced like lightning—instantly putting Aeron on edge—in every colour he could name. The sparks crackling around the prongs fed the flames that made the stag's crown. It was this creature Asha sat down next to, in one of the empty chairs.

Aeron could not see the final occupant of the chair on Asha's other side, but that soon changed as he quickened his pace to come around to where Asha sat, for as soon as he saw her so close to the lightning— _the stag, the stag is the emblem of the Storm Lands, and was it not their lords who caused us so much grief in the past!?_ —he felt much fear for her.

"Asha, get down from there," he told her gruffly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that, as he had expected, the eighth seat was occupied by a man with a giant falcon's head.

The girl who was Balon's daughter at that age gave him the same look she'd given him to say 'good luck' all those years ago.

"Someone must sit here, Damphair," she said. "If not you, or my other uncles then I suppose it must be me."

Aeron looked around at the other beasts for their reaction, but he could not read their expressions.

"We have no business with greenlanders, girl," he reminded her.

"Then we cannot hope to weather the storm," she said.

At once Aeron looked to the stag, but for now it said nothing. Asha's pitying look turned more solemn.

"The storm doesn't come from _him_."

No, of course it didn't. The Storm Lords had worshipped the Seven for thousands of years, they no longer believed in the God. The true Storm God was not to be found amongst the green lands. The storm was Euron. But to say they would need the assistance of Greenlanders to displace him was something only a woman could have thought of.

Wishing to know what this discussion was about, however, Aeron made for the final empty chair and grasped the wood to draw it out, but the man on the other side of him pulled the spear out of his head and laid it across the arms of the seat.

"That place is not for you," he said somehow—he had no mouth.

Aeron took a step back.

"Who is to take that place then?" he asked. "I see all seven kingdoms of Westeros represented. I even see the Riverlands. Who else has a place at this table?"

"The dragon does," said the sun. "And we are keeping that spot for them."

Dragons. That was Euron's plan too, but was it a horrendous folly on his part or was it truly the path to lead the iron born to greatness? Aeron had been so shocked by the idea that he hadn't had much more than the time to dismiss it simply for being suggested by Euron before he'd...

Before he'd...

Before he'd come to this place.

"Dragons," huffed the lioness. "What good did they ever do us? I say we need no more dragons. I say we let that line die."

"Without the dragons we shall all fail," argued the sun. "There will be no escaping what will come to pass. The end of light."

End of light? The idea did not much concern Aeron. There was no light beneath the waves.

"Fool," said the stag. Aeron flinched, because the stag was looking at him, not the sun. "Children and cravens fear the dark, but it takes a special kind of coward to fear the Light. The one true god is coming, Damphair. The other krakens have already seen it."

"The god of fire," Aeron said—he remembered what he'd heard about who the remaining stag was following these days. "A fire has no place in the watery halls."

"This fire has a place everywhere, Aeron Greyjoy, even in the darkest depths of the sea. Soon your brother's children will know that fire too."

"No," said Aeron. His voice sounded weaker to himself now. "No, that cannot happen."

"That is what we have convened to see," said the wolf. It spoke with a child's voice that sounded ghastly coming from that monstrous head. "And there must be a kraken at this table."

Aeron looked at the figures desperately for an answer to this blasphemy, but each and every one of them remained impassive, all except the whining dog who still cowered on the outskirts of the grove.

"I see no kraken," he said, feeling helpless. "Only a little girl." It was true that unlike the others, Asha's face and head remained normal.

"True," said the stag. "She is not who we would wish to be here. But the true kraken has gone to seek the dragon, and she will suffice until his return. If you desire her to be spared, seek him out, Damphair. We will be here for a long time."

"Until the dragon returns," said the sun.

"Or until night falls," said the wolf.

_Find Victarion_. That was what they wanted him to do, find Victarion! That was what Aeron wanted to hear anyway, and now it was necessary to save Asha from some terrible fate he could not quite decipher.

But whatever it was, Asha was Balon's daughter, and he would not let her fall to green land godlessness if it was in his power to do otherwise.

And to do that, he needed to go back to the sea.

At once he turned back to the trees they'd passed on their way in, and at once he stopped. The scaled dog was still whining, pawing at a thick, ropey vine that was stretched taut over the snow that filled the clearing—the snow that Aeron had not realised had been getting deeper, even as he had not realised the dog had been trying to warn him.

The vine had curled its way around Aeron's leg while he'd been talking to the seven beasts. He had stayed too long from the sea! With fear beginning to eat its way into him he tried to pull away, and when that didn't work, he tried to reach down to pull the rope away.

Only now there were vines around his arms as well. The fear spiked; he struggled to pull his arms free and could not get either of his hands around the vines to pull them loose.

What was going on!?

Then Asha screamed from her chair, "Run, Uncle Aeron! Run!" in a voice many times louder than it should have been.

As if on cue, sound returned to the island—wind, sea, the cries of animals and in the distance the sound of men screaming. Horrible, horrible sounds. On instinct, he obeyed the girl's command and began to run a ghoulish run that felt like he was running on the spot, even though the scenery slowly crept past and returned him to the shore.

Another vine reached out and wrapped itself around his waist, and another around his upper arm. He ran as hard as he could towards the ocean and the waves hitting the sand, thinking that if his feet could only touch the water he'd have the strength to free himself, but the shoreline only seemed to get further away with every step he took towards it.

The screaming was louder now, the vines pulled tighter, the chaos of the world outside the waves pushed harder at his mind. That never-ending storm battered him until he couldn't help but scream too.

"HELP ME!"

A vine tugged his hair back and stretched his neck in a way that should have been far more painful than it was. He put every ounce of his strength into fighting their pull, bending forwards so that he was almost, almost touching the water, and one more time he croaked out—

"Help... me..."

And after one more pull he saw a green shape in the water.

Faster than the eye could see the mermaid from before shot out of the water, reached under his arms and pulled him bodily beneath the waves. Quicker than a second, it took, and the vines relaxed like he had pulled them out of their moorings; like teeth, and everything went dark and quiet again.

He gasped in lungfuls of water, still clinging to the mermaid, who rested her chin on his shoulder while the world reversed again, reversed to the way it was meant to be—the sky beneath them. Relief flooded him, and he cursed his own cowardice. Never would he have been so afraid before Euron came back. Never.

Yet here and now his heart was weak. He sent a quick prayer to the Drowned God to wash away that weakness and make him harder and stronger again. Strong enough so that he would need no mermaid to save him, nor to hold him as she was doing now.

When he turned from her and looked behind himself, the island and the rock it had been built on had vanished.

"Asha..." he whispered. He was still panting, but he pushed away from the mermaid to step back towards the place where the island had been. "Asha!"

"She can't hear you, Aeron," said the mermaid. "She can't help you, nor you her."

"I _can_ help her!" he said, brushing at the vines that still covered his body, that still would not let go. "But we must find Victarion and bring him back."

The mermaid smiled.

"That one has been sent to seek the dragon. But I can tell you where to find him."

Aeron stopped pulling at the vines and stared.

"Then we must go at once," he said. "As soon as I..." he tried to pull again and made a noise of exertion, "remove these damned..."

Laughing, the mermaid pulled the floating locks of viridian hair behind her shoulders, and kept tugging, until Aeron felt the vines around his wrists move and snake away, and realised they had been made of her hair all along.

At first this confused him, but then he decided they must have been there to pull him back into the sea where he belonged the whole time, and his own doubts had turned them against him. He must not doubt in the future, he told himself. He must trust in the will of the Drowned God, and his servants.

"Thank you," he told her.

She reached out and stroked his face tenderly.

"There is no need to thank me," she said.

The stories he knew had not said, but it felt right to ask her all the same—

"Do you have a name?"

One of her braids hung heavily over the right side of her face, but her left eye glinted in pleasure.

"I am Ruoen," she said.

"Ruoen," he repeated, to try the name out in his mouth. "You will help me find my brother?"

For the second time, the mermaid leaned in and kissed him; this time with more gentleness.

"Certainly," she said.

 

*~*~*

 

_"Leave him like that until I return. If he dies, you'll wish it was you I had blowing that horn. I hope you hear me, Aeron. I swear, no more harm will come to you that I do not allow."_

 

*~*~*

 

The water swirled around them and pushed them up into an underwater cyclone. Aeron closed his eyes and let the sea take him where it would.

Once again he opened his eyes to find he was alone. The mermaid, Ruoen, had vanished, but he was sure that she was watching him still, from where he was not meant to know. It didn't matter; what mattered was that he found Victarion.

Had he failed his brother by allowing Euron to take the throne? It had been a long time since he'd been close to Victarion, and even when he had been Victarion had done the right thing and followed Balon's lead, showing him mostly scorn or at the very least exasperation until that dreadful, blessed day off Fair Isle. After that the scorn had gone, but a distance that came between every servant of the sea and every servant of iron had come between the brothers. Such was the way it was meant to be.

He did not think Victarion knew about what had happened all those years ago between him and Euron. A part of him had often wondered if Euron had ever tried... but he knew he had not done so with Urri, and Urri had been younger than Victarion.

_He saved that for me_ , he thought. _Only me._

It was perverse, but in that way he had felt closer even to Euron than he had to Victarion. But Victarion had been Balon's rock, and Balon had been a foundation for Aeron, so Aeron's allegiance was and would remain to Victarion.

Victarion couldn't have known, after all, and neither could Balon. If they had known, they would have had even less respect for him, but they would have done something about it as well. They would have. They were brothers.

Unbidden, an image of Victarion carrying that woman down to the beach came into his mind and he closed his eyes. _I would have deserved as much if they had decided to_ , he thought.

His musings were interrupted by a strong light flickering in the distance, which he saw as soon as he opened his eyes again. It was reddish orange, and Aeron knew at once that it did not belong, it was too much like lightning in the clouds.

So many indications that the Storm God was somehow involved in this affair were making themselves known, he thought, but as he swam closer he saw something that shocked him to the core.

It was no cloud of lightning glowing in the ocean.

It was fire.

"Victarion," he whispered.

He had heard as every child in Westeros had that the fire of dragons could not be doused by water, but this was the realm of the Drowned God itself, and surely not even dragon's fire could burn down here!

And yet, he felt its warmth more strongly the closer he got. And the closer he got, the more he realised that the fire he was seeing was spread over a vast area. Not a field of fire, but ten, or twenty—a hundred fields of fire raging along the barrier between the ocean and the air.

Then a great shadow passed beneath him, and Aeron felt his heart skip a beat. He'd not had the time to realise what it was, to recognise its shape, but in his heart he knew it was a dragon. No sea dragon, such as Nagga, was this. This was a dragon of the sky, and though it was not as large as that great beast, it was certainly as dangerous.

The water around him swirled abruptly, pulling him closer to the fire. With the Drowned God's blessing protecting him, he saw the flames shrink back enough at his approach that he could move through them without touching them, but that made little difference to the field.

What had made the difference had been whatever it was that had made the water move and pull him with it; something gigantic and powerful, something that belonged to the sea.

There it was.

The kraken.

Aeron was pulled in further to the spot in the ocean the fire was swirling around, and there he saw it: enormous, shining, golden—strong as iron. Its tentacles were many, their width wider than Aeron's entire body, and its eyes were half as tall as he himself was; silver grey and piercing. They fixed on him when he approached, but the kraken would not speak first.

This silence told Aeron he was the one expected to make the first enquiry, but unusually he was lost for words. He didn't know if this kraken was actually Victarion or not. A representation of Victarion, rather, shown as a vision to him by the Drowned God. The stag with the lightning antlers—a vision of the Baratheon family, or of Stannis Baratheon himself?—had called the whole family 'krakens', yet as he saw himself and Asha, they were not.

But there were other members of the family. Nervous, he swam around to the other side of the great beast to make sure it still had both eyes. It did, and now those eyes looked annoyed.

"Why do you stand there gawping, Damphair? You are beloved of our God, are you not? Come, give me a blessing that I might defeat this foe."

Startled to hear Victarion's voice come from the creature, Aeron drew back and replied.

"I will always offer you a blessing, brother, but this battle serves no purpose. We do not need dragons on Pyke."

"Pyke is no longer the only concern," Victarion told him. "The flames have spoken."

"The... the flames?" Aeron repeated, alarmed.

Sweeping one tentacle down into the air to swipe at the dragon which was again flying overhead, Victarion growled.

"I must get hold of her! Euron wishes for her to be his bride, but if I make her mine instead I could defeat him!"

Mention of hearing something from the flames had stirred a deep anxiety in Aeron, for all was for naught if Victarion also began falling to false gods, but this notion that he could subvert Euron by claiming the Targaryen girl as his own... that had merit. That could work!

And yet there was one clear obstacle. If the sea itself could not smother this girl's fire, how would Victarion?

"Fuck," the kraken swore. "I cannot hold her! Damphair, do you see the sword?"

Aeron looked around the dark green waters and right beside him where he should have seen it before was a sword, or something that resembled one anyway. It was made of wood, but shone like metal, and it had no hilt, and two edges. Something about it was familiar to Aeron—familiar, and foreboding.

"I see it," he confirmed.

"I must use it to catch the dragon, it is the only weapon that can do it."

_Catch the dragon_? Aeron thought. _Of course. This sword is the wretched horn that Euron brought back from Valyria._

At once he knew the foreboding he felt was more than just the residual disgust from what that item had wrought at the kingsmoot. No, there was something very dangerous about the weapon. Something Euron had meant to harm Victarion with.

"The sword has two sides and no hilt, brother," Aeron said. "You cannot hold it safely, Victarion, do not do this thing!"

"I might be able to," said Victarion. "With this."

He turned so that he was facing Aeron again. Another swerve in the water pushed Aeron back a foot or two and one of the kraken's tentacles waved into his view.

But this limb was not gold as the rest of the kraken's body was. It was pitch black.

What on earth could that mean? Aeron didn't understand it, and because of that, he did not like it. There was no immediate explanation that had precedent in the knowledge he had of the Drowned God. To him, that made it as suspect as the horn.

"No," he said. "Victarion, I don't know what that means, but I do not think it is the answer you should seek. Trust in the Drowned God, not in tricks—those are Euron's prerogative."

"There is a saying among the greenlanders," Victarion replied. "That sometimes, one must fight fire with fire."

"We are not greenlanders!" Aeron shouted.

But as he did, he recalled that the Drowned God had shown him something that concerned them. That table Asha had been sitting at on the silent island—those creatures that sat around it. The eight most powerful families in Westeros. They were important somehow, but how? Surely it was not as Euron believed, that he was meant to rule over all of them?

For the iron born as a whole to rule over Westeros, that was something Aeron believed in; but not Euron. And there was something else, as well, something he could not put his finger on that seemed to be almost right in front of him and yet was going unnoticed by him and everyone else. Yet he could not for the life of him figure it out.

The kraken did not answer him, nor make any explanation as to how the green lands would be important, but instead swam towards the wooden sword.

"She's coming again, Damphair," he said. "I have to make a move."

"Wait, Victarion!"

Victarion did not listen. The black tentacle swooped out and took hold of the sword, the flames parted, and the kraken shot downwards into the air, faster than such a huge creature should have been capable of. Aeron stood still only for a moment, bubbles flying past him, before he knelt down to stick his head below the water.

When the direction of the world switched for the third time it caused a degree of nausea. Aeron found himself floating on a wide stretch of sea, drifting past waves that were on fire. He found Victarion at once when the beast crashed back down onto the ocean.

"Victarion!" he cried.

"I almost had her," Victarion growled, pushing himself back. "She's making another dive; get under the water!"

Aeron jerked his head up and saw the dragon as it was for the first time; huge and black with rough, almost spiky scales. It was circling around in a now blue sky and coming back towards them. He only had the time to see it breathe fire at the sea before instinct took over and he plunged beneath it for cover.

That made the world shift again though, and once he saw the shadow pass towards Victarion he re-entered the sky and let the difference between up and down mean whatever it wanted to.

Victarion had his tentacles around the dragon now, two around its hind legs and the one with the sword pushing back against its throat where it was trying to bite him. It made a crying noise halfway between an eagle's shriek and a lion's roar, scrabbling at him with its claws and drawing blood from the gold skin of the kraken.

But not from the black part. And as Aeron watched, and as the kraken continued to grip the sword, the black began to spread up the tentacle like smoke and creep onto the head, and the other tentacles that held the dragon's legs. It was like an infection.

Aeron's heart was filled with fear. No plan of Euron's nor of anything that had to do with unnatural fire could come to good, he'd known it, and now he was proved right. But there had to be something he could do about it, or he would not have been sent here, or been allowed to see this. There was something about that table in the snowy clearing...

"Fucking bitch!" spat the kraken. "Struggle all you want; you'll be mine soon enough, if I have to turn my whole body black to do it!"

"No..." Aeron said, realisation fitting the pieces of this puzzle together in his mind. "No, I see now. The Drowned God showed me a table set for nine. He meant for me to see that." Taking a deep breath, he raised his voice so that Victarion would hear. "Asha keeps your place for you now, brother, but you are meant to sit that table, as is the dragon. You must bring her back to Westeros—but not as your wife, nor as Euron's."

As what, then, was the question Aeron asked himself next, but at the same time he felt it enough that he had been told this much. The reason why could wait to reveal itself when Victarion returned with Daenerys Targaryen in hand.

It did make sense to him that the girl was not to be the wife of either of his brothers, though. The wives of the ironborn should be of the islands. Green land girls were for salt wives. Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons had some other role to play.

"Victarion!"

He yelled, but the kraken and the dragon continued to fight, and the blackness continued to grow. Aeron's voice was not reaching him.

"Victarion!"

"He cannot hear you now."

Aeron turned his head, and there was Ruoen. She sat close to him in the water; he felt her tail slide against his legs before he moved—for this was no time to indulge in a mermaid's affections, and he was not entirely sure what the touch meant anyway. Right now he was more concerned with Victarion fighting a battle in which Aeron was not sure whether winning or losing would be the worse outcome.

"Ruoen," he breathed. "What must I do to convince him?"

The mermaid's left eye shined with mirth through her long green hair. "It's not a question of convincing him, Damphair. He cannot hear you. He isn't here, and you are not there."

Her words confused him at first, but a moment's thought made him remember. This was what the Drowned God was showing to him, not something that wasn't really real, but not the kind of real that Victarion would know either.

That meant Aeron could not reach him like this. Still breathing hard, he turned to Ruoen instead.

"Can you talk to him, wherever he is?" he asked her.

Ruoen tittered. "Oh, I could," she said, "but are you sure that's what is meant to happen."

One thing, at least, Aeron was sure of.

"My brother cannot die."

"Not this brother, you mean?" Ruoen gave him a pointed look. He maintained eye-contact with the eye he could see, and eventually she sighed. "I can tell him. But not now. First, you must do something for me."

For her? Did she mean to say he had a task to perform in the service of the Drowned God, or in the service of her personally? Did mermaids even have personal desires? Nothing in the stories he'd heard had truly delved into their nature—but this was the first time he was realising it. How much else was there that he did not know?

_You know as much as you need to_ , he told himself, _except for what you are learning now._

"What would you have me do?" he asked.

"Tell me," said Ruoen. "Tell me why you are really here, Aeron. Tell me as soon as you know the answer."

She leaned in close, taking his face in her cold palms as the flames rose up around them.

"It's the only way to save them."

Aeron wasn't sure what happened first this time; Ruoen's kiss, or the whirlpool that pulled him down into the dark.

 

*~*~*~*

 

_"Why does he keep him alive, do you think? I hadn't thought the captain was much for brotherly love!"_

_"That's 'his grace' if you don't want to end up like Botley, and then some! And I think his grace's idea of brotherly love is a little more hands on than most of us would want."_

_"I think the lot of you should keep your bleeding mouths shut about it and do your fucking jobs. Don't think he won't know just because he's in the Reach right now. He knows things, boys—make no mistake about it. He always knows."_

 

*~*~*~*

 

It seemed longer this time; swirling around in the depths of the sea—eerie, and yet comforting and peaceful at the same time. He tumbled around the waves like seaweed, silent and weightless. It took many turns of the current before he opened his eyes again.

Again, Ruoen had vanished. But Aeron had a feeling that although he could not see her, she most definitely could see him.

She was the servant of the Drowned God, as he was, and she was sent to lead him to the truth of what he had to do to protect his family and the people of the true god from what Euron planned for them. He knew some of what that was now, and he had an idea that Asha and Victarion were meant to have some kind of discourse with other lords of Westeros, along with the Targaryen girl.

What he did not yet know was how to get them to where they were meant to be before Euron's dark plans for them came into fruition. However, he trusted Ruoen and the god they served and knew this vision proved there was a reason Euron had been chosen. It proved that everything that had happened would make sense.

Soon, something occurred that put a notion furthering his faith into his head. Aeron sank down to the barrier between sea and sky and looked for the Drowned God's next sign to him. This time, he heard it before he saw it—it was the sound of the storm.

Distant, like he was hearing it from inside a seashell, but unmistakable in cadence and the way it shook the water, sending thousands and thousands of ripples across the space he walked on, their small waves brushing against his feet. He looked down when the thunder roared and saw the lightning in the clouds far below him.

_Even a prophet may feel fear_ , he told himself, as fear filled him. But he knew what it meant. He would now face the Storm God for a chance to commune directly with the Drowned God.

So he steeled himself and turned to go back to the sky once more.

Only this time, he didn't get the chance.

Just as his face was touching the boundary the storm below sent a bolt of lightning shooting up onto the waves no more than a foot away from him. Aeron was thrown up into the water before he could understand what had happened, eyes filled with a light so bright he thought he might go blind, even as the waters got darker.

He saw the bolt rise up like a tree, forked, shooting past his face once the thickness of the ocean slowed his ascent and he was able to make himself still again. It spread its branches in a way no lightning Aeron had ever seen did, and then from the bottom it disappeared.

Another bolt struck the water about twenty metres to his left, another thirty metres in front of him, and he guessed there were probably more where he couldn't see them. The wrath of the Storm God was powerful, and he would use that wrath to the fullest to stop the Drowned God's people from becoming great—stop Aeron from finding out how they were to do it.

_I must be strong_ , thought Aeron, breathing the ocean deep within and turning to swim back down to the boundary. The light was still coming from beneath, the current was difficult to swim against, and the waters were growing ever colder, but this was what had to be done.

This was it; the final test. This would be his answer.

Then, suddenly, the light changed. A shadow was falling from the sky up onto the boundary—a shadow that flashed at one point like a dark thundercloud, but as it got closer Aeron could see its true shape begin to coalesce out of the amorphous mass.

It was a person. The Storm God himself no doubt, but Aeron knew He could not come beneath the waves where the wind could not blow. Outside the water he was powerful, and had that power over the waves, but inside it he was nothing and that was why he hated the sea and all who came from it. Aeron remembered this and felt more courageous for it—perhaps if he could somehow pull the Storm God below the trial would be completed.

On he swam, and saw the Storm God stop and stand on the boundary—upside-down from Aeron's perspective, and the perspective of the true world, he told himself. He reached the bottom and looked down, and more lighting struck the water around him. He tried to get a closer look at his foe, but the god was wrapped in an inky blackness that obscured his face but for a few differences in the shadows.

This time Aeron could not cross the barrier as easily as he had before; the wind beat against it too hard for him to penetrate further than with the tips of his fingers. Then another bolt of lightning struck close enough that the force within the water pushed him away a few feet. He gritted his teeth and swam back. This was what he had to do. Defeat the Storm God; defeat Euron.

Realisation struck. Of course—Euron! Asha was the little girl, Victarion was the Kraken, and the Storm God was Euron, who wrought havoc and misery like the storm; who'd brought the storm to Pyke the day Balon fell, and if Asha's suspicions were correct then had done so on purpose and for that very reason. Aeron would certainly not have put it past him.

He swam harder to reach him. The Drowned God had given him strength; had given him this chance, this was his final opportunity to destroy Euron. He reached the boundary and pressed against it with all his strength.

_Bless me with salt. Bless me with stone. Bless me with steel._

The boundary gave way a little. He was doing it! He focussed his strength and pushed harder.

_I am ironborn and son of the sea. I am the Drowned God's chosen. You cannot defeat me, Euron!_

There was still no pain no matter how hard he strained his muscles, but he felt the strain in his heart none the less. And it was hard, but such was the way of the world. Such was the path that had been set for him. Such petty pain could be conquered—he knew, because as he prayed harder he was pushing back the wind.

The Storm God crouched down so that they were facing each other, but Aeron still could not see his face.

_It is Euron, though_ , he thought to himself. _Euron is the storm that threatens us. Euron will destroy us if I don't stop him, and I will stop him!_

Aeron's face pushed through the barrier, which he used as leverage to push his body down—then up when the world reversed to the wrong world where the sky was above the sea. He could see the Storm God more clearly now.

The God saw him too, evidently: he began to reach back. His hand touched Aeron's and closed around it, filling it with a surge that felt like lightning but again with no pain, and then he tried to push him back into the water.

The wind blasted over the waves, the rain hurled itself onto the sea, thunder shook the sky and Aeron fought back against the Storm God's strength, but every ounce of power he put into fighting him was matched and sent back, leaving them at a kind of stalemate. Still, Aeron pressed harder.

"You cannot win, Euron!" he cried. "The Drowned God will not allow it!"

The Storm God leaned in closer to him. "Euron?" he said. His voice stilled the storm. "You're not fighting Euron."

Somehow, the waves themselves went still, and the black cloud blew away from the God's face like dust.

Aeron's own face stared back at him.

 

 

*~*~*

 

 

He choked, and at that moment lighting shot right from the Storm God's hands against his own, and all his strength fell from him and washed into the sea. He flew back, away from the boundary into the deeper depths of the ocean, falling, falling... always falling, always failing no matter how he tried.

Utter confusion swept over him. He could not understand what had just happened, and he was still moving, thrown about by the current, wild and uncontrolled and he didn't understand!

What had he done wrong?

What had he possibly—

"Damphair!"

A sudden stop knocked the wind out of him. He gasped for breath.

"Aeron."

Ruoen was there. She'd held him fast by grabbing his hand and stopping him from going any further, and because she was a true servant of the Drowned God and not a failure the waters calmed themselves in her presence. Aeron couldn't.

"It was me!" he told her. There was something wrong with his voice because he couldn't hear in it the desolation that he should have been feeling—perhaps the truth of the situation had not quite yet sunk in, though he did feel tears begin to collect in his eyes.

_The sea will wash them away_.

"It was me, Ruoen. The Storm God was me, not Euron. This was my fault."

Ruoen cupped his face with her palm.

"No, Damphair," she said gently, the one eye that he could see glittering. "It is only that your greatest enemy is not Euron. It is your own weakness. This is what you're finally admitting to yourself."

"Myself?" But that did not make any sense. "This is the realm of the Drowned God!" he hissed. "It is not my own head!"

"Are you so sure about that, Aeron?"

And there it was.

The greatest of all his great fears given voice by the slick and shimmering mermaid, who kept circling him like a shark herding fish into smaller and smaller an area. Greater even than his fear of Euron was the thought that that second pillar that was the foundation of his very existence wasn't even really there at all.

Before the kingsmoot he had been certain, he was sure of it. But those echoing cries of 'EURON! EURON! EURON!' had sent a crack into that pillar that he had thought was invulnerable, and if it was not invulnerable then how could he trust that anything else he thought he knew was true?

He could only entertain the thought for a split-second. Even that was tantamount to sacrilege.

"I am sure," he growled. He tried not to be so angry. He knew she was only testing him.

And yet...

"Then tell me, brother, what is it that you must do when you return to the world outside the water?"

"I must protect Victarion," he said at once. "I must protect Asha. I must see them and the dragon girl to Westeros. I must—"

What was that she had called him?

_What was that she had called him?!_

"You must what? Has our god not told you how to defeat your brother? For if he hasn't, should you not take that to mean that you must not defeat your brother?"

That could not be so. That could not be so.

"I..."

"Brother?" she said, more insistently now.

He trembled. "Why are you calling me that?" he asked her. His voice came out in barely more than a whisper.

"You know why, Aeron. Who else loves you enough to join you here? Who else serves the Drowned God as well as you? Who else touches you like this?"

Her webbed, slippery fingers ran up the sides of a body that was suddenly naked; her thumbs tracing over his nipples. The grip she had on him was too strong for him to pull out of, though he tried to jerk away as hard as he could. He reached for her to push her back, but quick as a water snake she moved her hands between his arms as though in prayer, then parted them and cast his own asunder, bringing them to rest on his shoulders and trapping his elbows against his sides with her own.

"No!" he spat at her, twisting against her. It was humiliating, but her strength was far greater than his and he could not break free. "No, you can't be!"

Ruoen laughed hard at him.

"See for yourself," she said.

Aeron knew he should have pushed away and tried to swim deeper into the ocean the moment she released one of his arms. He knew it. And yet in that terrible moment his mind was overcome with fascinated horror as well as with fear, and before he knew it his free right hand was rising up towards her face, and the hair that he had never not seen cover her left eye.

He felt tears of something in his own when he tangled his fingers in the coarse green locks, pulling them down hard and twisting the strands around his wrist. His heart beat like thunder in his chest, his own nails digging into his palms. He did not want to pull the hair aside. He didn't.

He pulled it aside with a vicious yank.

A pitch-black orb stared back at him, from an eye-socket stained blue, like the mouth of one who drank that foul concoction.

"Hello, brother," said Ruoen.

Aeron's mouth fell open. He forgot how to breathe.

This could not be.

This could not—

The creature in his arms, whatever it was, suddenly dug her own fingers into Aeron's hair in turn and took advantage of his paralysis to kiss him harshly; a kiss he well remembered. A horrible kiss he should have recognised sooner.

She kissed him so hard he fell back and they flipped around and surfaced in the sky below, sea-water flying off the both of them. This disoriented Aeron, though not as much as the fact that Ruoen was no servant of the Drowned God. She was nothing of the sort.

She was Euron.

The iron-strong hands around him tightened, the bones of her—his?—fingers digging in and somehow still not painful. The only pain Aeron felt could not be called physical at all, and so he deemed it was a wound in his very soul; a tear Euron had put in him many years ago that he never let heal, but kept coming back to dig his hands in again, and again, and again.

One hand snaked around his head and yanked it back by his hair. She pulled his mouth away, but that only meant he was forced to gaze into her eyes, and that was somehow worse.

"Did you think I would let you die, my pet?" Ruoen asked him. Her voice was no longer hers, but Euron's. "No, you knew you were here for a reason. If you have not found a way to defeat me, you know you have been brought here to help me."

She grinned, but the grin was angry.

"You will help me, Aeron."

The anger was not aimed at him. Something more than fear and horror twinged inside Aeron when he realised that.

"You'll see. You'll help me by telling me why you're here."

"To... destroy... you..." Aeron gasped out.

Euron's hands tightened again. His fingers must have been penetrating flesh by this point. "No, brother, we know that is not why. You are going to help me."

"No."

"Help me."

The creature's words came out as a hiss that Aeron couldn't help but wonder at, for it sounded as though there was desperation in its menace.

"Never," he choked out.

"Help me," it repeated. "Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me. Help me! Help me! Help me! Help me! HELP me! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME! HELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Shrieking into his face in such a way that all thought was dashed out of Aeron's mind, this vision of Euron screamed until its scream was swallowed up by a howl Aeron had not heard in years, and never in such a dreadful way as he did now.

It was the howl of an icy winter wind, and as the scream continued the cold that had been seeping into the sea got worse, there was a sickening crack like the breaking of bones, and in an instant Euron was frozen solid before him.

And with him, the entire ocean froze as well.

 

*~*~*

 

_"Aeron? Can you hear me? Are you still in there somewhere?"_

 

*~*~*

 

_The night was cold and the wind was howling through the castle. The brothers could just about hear the wooden boards of the rope bridges clattering against each other in the gale. The fire waved back and forth, too weak to warm the room in its entirety, and so the five of them were sitting close to it, closer than they would normally get to each other, never mind a fire._

_Balon, as the eldest, sat the furthest away to prove his strength as he watched over the others. But he was restless, and whether that was because of the cold or because it irked him to be made to share his company with children when he had already been on several reavings the others did not know._

_For one thing the same could not be said of Euron, who had managed to squeeze in his first just before winter had set in—he seemed quite content to lie across from the fire and watch Aeron and Urrigon bat wooden soldiers against each other. Every now and then Urri would plead to Victarion to join them, but Victarion was trying to be the mirror Balon never wanted and was copying his stern pose as best he could._

_Urri had given up at this point though, and not just on getting Victarion to play with them, but on being awake. He dreamed with odd peacefulness, to contrast the raging blizzard outside. Aeron played on though, holding a toy ship in front of the fire and moving it up and down. Perhaps in the young boy's imagination, the fire moved enough like water to pretend._

_The intensity Euron watched him move that ship with could only be termed 'strange'. But neither Balon nor Victarion seemed to notice._

_It was not an awkward silence, as each boy was wrapped up enough in their own separate thoughts for silence to be welcome; anything else would have been a distraction for the elder three at any rate, and the younger two most likely would not have paid much attention if one did occur._

_And one did._

_"My lord."_

_A simple guardsman with snowflakes in his plaited beard addressed the brothers as he strode into the room. He stopped and nodded to them once he was well in, though none spared him more than a glance._

_"Lord Quellon requests your presence in his chambers, my lord. You and your brother."_

_Balon clicked his tongue with irritation and stood up. He turned to go, then stopped when he realised Euron wasn't following._

_"Are you coming?" he asked icily._

_Euron grinned. "Did he mention which brother specifically?" he asked the guard. "Your Lord has four in this room."_

_"He didn't say which in particular, no," the guard told them._

_"In that case take Victarion. He actually wants to go."_

_The lackadaisical tone provoked Balon to walk back to the fire, and Euron, and bend over him menacingly._

_"You know very well he means you," he said._

_Euron only grinned harder._

_"Fine then," said Balon. "But I've no doubt you'll regret this. And if this careless way of yours continues you'll likely have much to regret in the future too."_

_"I could hardly regret the chance to spend more time with little Aeron now, could I?"_

_"Ch."_

_Balon let that expression of disgust speak for him as he beckoned to Victarion, and they and the guard left the light of the hearth and strode out into the corridor. Aeron didn't even lift his head to see where they had gone, though he heard their footsteps echo away until the wind outside drowned them out._

_This left him alone with Euron, and a sleeping Urri. While he'd let his toy ship distract him from the tense exchange between his eldest brothers, now that there was only one other conscious person in the room his attention was naturally drawn to Euron. Or maybe it was because the older boy's eyes were so intent on him that it put a fear in him he didn't understand._

_That was what Euron felt from him as he watched. He honestly didn't know why Aeron fascinated him so much at this stage. He was his youngest brother, the most good-natured, but honestly nothing else set him apart from any other child his age._

_And yet Euron was still looking. And not bored by looking._

_"Can I play too, Aeron?" he asked._

_Aeron was too young to understand the nuances in the tone he used. To him it sounded as though Euron was actually interested in playing, though even at his age he knew something was off about that._

_"Not with my ship," Aeron told him._

_"Oh, well then, I won't bother."_

_At last Euron turned away from him and Aeron went back to playing. But only for a moment. A few seconds later he looked at Euron again, and found Euron's piercing eyes already back on him. He tried to focus on his ship and moving it along the fire's shadow, but the feel of his brother's eyes crawling over him kept drawing his own gaze back to Euron._

_His heart beat faster. The wind outside seemed quieter. The fire weaker. Euron barely blinked as he watched him play, and in less than two minutes Aeron couldn't bear it any longer. He stopped, and crawled over, shoulders hunched. As if by instinct, he kept his eyes lowered when he offered the ship to Euron._

_First, Euron patted him on the head. Then he took the ship and lay back, holding it up to look at it in the light._

_"What's its name?" he asked._

_"The Drowned Mermaid," Aeron told him._

_Laughter escaped from Euron's lips. "Drowned Mermaid?" he repeated. "What made you give it that name?"_

_Aeron fidgeted uncomfortably. " 'Drowned' because of the Drowned God, and 'Mermaid' because I like mermaids. Mother says Harlon is with them now."_

_"He may very well be," Euron said, in between chuckles. "But Aeron, I'm afraid mermaids can't drown."_

_"But everything can drown," Aeron said. "Otherwise they can't go to the watery halls."_

_Euron leant in. "Even you?"_

_He smiled at the confusion in Aeron's eyes._

_"If you like... we can go down to the stream and practice drowning you. You want to enter the Halls, don't you?"_

_The question made Aeron avert his eyes. He shifted from side to side but couldn't bring himself to shuffle back. It was like he was frozen._

_"The stream's frozen over," he mumbled._

_"In the sea then. The proper way."_

_"Maybe tomorrow the sea will freeze over too."_

_This time Euron's laughter was much louder. Aeron heard it echo back on the stone walls as clear as if the room had been silent. It felt silent. It felt like it was just the two of them and no one else existed anymore. Aeron hugged his shoulders tightly and shivered._

_"The sea doesn't freeze over, little brother. It's far too big and powerful."_

_Frowning, Aeron chanced a look into Euron's eyes to ask him, "Does it never freeze over?"_

_Euron pretended to think about that for a few seconds, but then as he pretended he was reminded of a tale he'd heard an old sailor babble drunken snatches of when he was sailing with his father. The memory sprouted into an idea, the idea gave way to more laughter, and he turned onto his side facing Aeron again._

_"Well, now that you mention it... it did happen once."_

_"When?"_

_"Oh, a long time ago."_

_He put the toy down, slapped his hands against the side of the long seat and sat up._

_"Come here, and I'll tell you the story."_

_At first, Aeron sat completely still. Euron spread his arms out to receive him, and managed to catch his eye in such a way that Aeron could not look away. Then he blinked, and without really meaning to he found himself moving his body forward, into Euron's embrace._

_Euron met him halfway, scooping him up and rising to his feet. Aeron was not particularly light for his age, and Euron only just becoming a man, but somehow he carried him without any strain—away from the fire and over to the window to look out onto the sea, and the snowflakes falling on the waves. Aeron shuddered with the cold._

_"It was a long time ago," Euron whispered to him. "A long, long time—before the Grey King slew Nagga, even, and our people had barely begun to crawl out of the sea. A long time ago, when the Long Night fell across all of Westeros, and people lived their whole lives in the darkness of winter. Not just a long winter, but one ten times as cold as it is now. And in the dark, beyond the Wall that separates the North from what lies beyond, in the white forests of skeleton trees... the Others woke."_

_"The Others?" Aeron whispered back. He felt suddenly weak, and this pleased Euron._

_"The Others, who crossed into the realms of men to eat the flesh of little children; gobble, gobble, gobble. They'd tear skin away from bone with a single quick bite, and when they were full, what was left of the body would get up and start walking again, coming back to kill more little children for their masters to feed on. And that winter was so cold that the sea itself froze over, trapping the Drowned God and all his powers beneath a hundred feet of ice, and the Others walked across that ice to our islands from the green lands, bashing men's heads against the frozen waves—until their brains soaked into the ice."_

_Here he made as if to drop Aeron out the window, but quickly caught him again. Aeron screamed, arms wrapping vice-like around Euron's neck. A part of him was angry for that jape, but he could not do anything more than stare at Euron with betrayal and terror. Euron only laughed again._

_"I was just teasing, Aeron," he said. "You didn't think I'd actually drop you, did you?"_

_Aeron was compelled to shake his head no, even though he didn't really know the answer._

_"Of course I wouldn't," Euron said. "I haven't finished the story."_

_He was silent for a long time after that. Aeron leaned in._

_"How does it end?" he asked._

_Euron's arms held him tighter, more like a constricting snake than like a loved one._

_"Well now," he said, looking out onto the cold night sky. "That depends."_

_"Why?"_

_"It depends on what happens tonight. You can go to sleep and dream the ending of the story, and when you wake up, repeat what you saw to me, and I'll tell you if you were right or not."_

_Aeron frowned._

_"What if I don't wake up?" he asked._

_"You will," Euron told him. He gave him a brief kiss on the corner of his mouth. "I'll make sure you—_

 

*~*~*

 

WAKE UP!

 

*~*~*

 

...

 

...

 

The prophet knew as soon as he opened his eyes that he was not alone. The warm weight of another body pressed against him from behind, pulling him a little along the chains that hung from the wall and shackled his wrists.

His heart beat faster. Painfully so.

On one side of him was the wall of a dank cell, dark brick fitted together snugly and dripping wet, generously grown with seaweed that hung from between some of the blocks. On the other a single torch beneath a barred window, out of which he could still hear the sea and feel the cold air blowing forward. The blessing of the Drowned God. A blessing he had not thought he had deserved.

The man behind him ran a hand down his naked chest toward his member, then leaned forward and kissed his neck. He was not far forward enough for Aeron to see him, but he felt the scrape of his short beard against his skin and tried to pull away.

Euron held him tighter, his strength unbeatable even had Aeron not been in the condition he was in; chained and weakened. He mouthed again at Aeron's neck, and Aeron struggled to stave his disgust off from encapsulating everything he was and breaking him again.

_This is the trial you have to overcome if you will defeat him._

He knew it. And yet the moment Euron began to speak, it became so much harder to breathe.

"Shh, shh, shh..." Euron whispered in his ear. "What's wrong? Are you coming back to your senses at last, dear brother?"

It was hard to understand the words at first, his ears unused to hearing the voices of mortal men after so long beneath the sea, but the meaning came to him quickly. The sensations of his mortal body were returning too, unwelcome as they were, and though he tried to remain strong the horror of his situation set his breathing to a dizzying pace.

_Breathe_ , he told himself. _You know well how to breathe by now._

He was freezing cold, and naked. His skin was wet, and his limbs were heavy with exhaustion—his hands almost numb from being restrained for... how long had it been? Too long. Days at least. Weeks more likely.

And yet his head felt far too light, and it wasn't long before he realised why, and understood at least one reason why he'd lost his battle with the Storm God.

Euron had cut his hair off.

His beard was now as short as Euron's own, and the vile hand that worked its way up his face ran foul fingers through strands that no longer reached his neck. Some did not even reach his jaw.

Blasphemy! He struggled again, for this sin could not be tolerated. To cut his hair—the audacity... did Euron have no conception of what was right? No respect for the glory of their god?!

_Why do you even ask yourself? You know he does not._

He knew, and yet it still hurt. It hurt more than the chains, more than the cold, more than the disgusting feel of Euron's member being pulled from his body and the seed spilling down his legs. He could tell at once that Euron had defiled him several times already; it did not matter how many, one time was just as evil as a hundred.

But his hair... that was truly a loss. Without it, his path became so much the harder. The Drowned God would not look upon him favourably for it.

"You are awake, little brother," Euron murmured. "I'm glad. I thought perhaps the sea and your precious god had taken your mind completely this time—it took so long to bring you back after you cast yourself from that cliff—"

"Your men chased me off it," Aeron said, remembering. His voice was barely anything, but it sufficed.

"They chased you to the edge; and in my defence you were talking about starting rebellion. I did not mean for you to fall."

_I always fall._

"Anyway, I'm glad you're not _completely_ insane. I would have had to keep you locked up in here to take what pleasure I could from you forever. And I would have missed your counsel, brother, truly I would have. What with Victarion so far away and all our other dear brothers dead... I felt lonely, dearest. You were always my favourite. And soon, I fear, it will just be the two of us."

That was one thing Aeron could not let himself fail in. If it cost him his life, his soul, his hair, his very mind—whatever there was left of it—he could not let Euron outlive Victarion. Or the girl; he told himself he had to accept her importance now, and so he would have to. It was the will of the Drowned God, and she was Balon's daughter.

He had to protect them both now.

Protect them both.

Protect...

And suddenly, he understood. He understood everything he had seen, everything he had been told, and he knew the Drowned God was truly great.

"Euron," he choked out.

The Crow's Eye tilted Aeron's head sideways to look into his eyes, caressing the side of his face gently when he pulled it towards him. He answered gently too, but mocking at the same time.

"Yes, brother?"

"Ruoen..." Aeron said, "told me... I must tell her—tell you... what the Drowned God showed me."

Euron feigned surprise, his eye going comically wide. "Did she now? Well, that is interesting."

"And if I tell you, you must spare Victarion and Asha from whatever evil you have planned for them."

"Yes, well that goes without saying." Euron smiled. "All right, Aeron; since you did ask so nicely, I promise I'll see the two of them live long and happy lives, if you'll only tell me what deep and meaningful wisdom it was that our beloved Drowned God wanted me to know."

"The sea will turn to ice."

This time there was no exaggeration in the widening of Euron's eye. Aeron was close enough to see the pupil shrink, and even had that not been so he would have felt his brother's body go utterly still around him. Whatever Euron had expected him to say, that wasn't it.

"What?" he whispered.

"The sea will freeze, Crow's Eye, and the ancient enemy will creep from beyond the Wall, along the ice until they find our lands and kill us all."

Aeron was almost surprised that Euron stepped away from him completely then; that what he'd said had actually seemed to strike at a nerve—almost so, for he now knew this was what the Drowned God had intended, for Aeron to hold His knowledge from Euron until the true king could be safe-guarded, then for Euron to use the knowledge he'd earn by not killing Victarion against the ancient enemy.

The thought of the ancient enemy did not scare Aeron. The ironborn would be victorious against them. Perhaps it was even fated that Euron would die in fighting them, a fate that would have fallen on Victarion had the kingsmoot not legitimised Euron's throne. Yes, that made perfect sense to Aeron. He cursed himself for ever doubting. He'd deserved what Euron had done to him for his doubt.

"The Drowned God told you this?" Euron pressed, still whispering, but turned away from him now.

"He revealed it to me," Aeron told him. "Victarion and Asha are important, and you must not let them die. The Others are returning. The Long Night will come again, and soon."

"Winter is Coming?" quipped Euron, but that was best ignored.

"To know more, I must be drowned again."

It was odd, but Euron stared at him with a kind of wonder when he said that, and leant back against the wet stone walls.

"You actually do have some kind of Sight," he said. "When all these years I thought you'd just been driven mad. I feel somehow proud of you."

"I am nothing for _you_ to feel proud about."

"Don't be like that. To tell you the truth I had some inkling about what you've told me after I visited Asshai, and a little more I picked up in Valyria. Our God has been the least vague about it, of course, confirming it through you, which no doubt proves he is the one true God. And you say he has more to tell me?"

Aeron gathered all his strength into staring hard. "So long as Victarion and Asha—"

"—are spared. Yes, I think He's made that quite clear. In that case we will fight together as a family. It will be very inspiring. And bloody."

"You will drown me again, as soon as I am sufficiently recovered?" Aeron demanded.

He had to speak with that much conviction. His wrists hurt, and he could feel Euron's seed staining his body like some vile poison, a body naked without the hair the godless wretch had stolen from him. This conviction was all he had.

Drowning was all he had.

"You seem to be looking rather more forward to that part than I think is altogether healthy."

"You _will_ drown me again," snapped Aeron.

Breathing was hard, but so was life. He grit his teeth and did not blink in the face of the fear that one eye wrought within him. He was stronger than before.

"Very well, little brother," Euron said, his grin failing to meet his uncovered eye. "I shall drown you every day from now on, and every day from now on I will be the one to bring you back, and you will tell me what you have seen." He paused. "Though I am lead to wonder..."

Aeron knew what he was going to say. He knew what he was going to say, but he had the strength to bear it.

He had to.

"Every day you come back from his Halls, will that be a sign of the Drowned God's favour for you... or for me?"

Euron laughed, and the door slammed shut.

 


End file.
